


Suck, In Fragments

by CrumblingAsh



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bruce Feels, Bruce and Steve are bros, Bucky Barnes Feels, Cancer, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt Bruce, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Multi, Platonic Soulmates, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Tony, Sickfic, Slow Build, Someone dies, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Steve Feels, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Tony Feels, Tony Has Issues, Tony Stark Has A Heart, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:08:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrumblingAsh/pseuds/CrumblingAsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finding your soulmate in a hospital was just all sorts of fucking wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

 

 

Bucky Barnes hated his life, and he hated that it was taking so long to be over.

 

Pop-culture media made cancer out to be romantic, a slow-moving death that either faded away in time to save the final breath, or swept over its victim like a dark, comforting blanket of quiet oblivion, with enough time for tender goodbyes and sweet kisses and to be finished with the world by the time it was over.

 

At thirty-one, Bucky was nowhere near finished with the world. But he sat on the bed the hospital staff had banished him to, the blinds of his window perpetually closed, his arm perpetually missing, and his mother perpetually absent. Because last month he had screamed in her face, his voice and words nothing but uninhibited rage as he venomously informed her of how much he hated her, how utterly useless she was and had always been, how horrible of a mother she had turned out to be, to just _get the fuck out_ because he had never wanted her there and didn’t want her there now.

 

And the last thing he had seen of her was her face wrenched in sorrow and rejection, eyes struggling with tears she hadn’t let fall, and the back her blonde head as she did as he said and disappeared through the door.

 

“Knock, knock!” A cheerful voice called out. The scowl was already in place as his nurse, happy as always, peaked through the door. Sharon – she was nice enough, as nurses went, but he was so damn _tired_ of nice already. “Good morning, James! I’m glad you’re up. I have your roommate here.” Roommate. And wasn’t that the final nail in the coffin? “He’s eager to get settled in and meet you. You wanna come in, sweetheart?” The last part was aimed behind her, and Bucky snorted as she turned. _Sweetheart?_ They had said the guy was twenty-seven, a little old to be called _sweetheart_ by a nurse younger than that. What was he, crippled? Close to death? She never called Bucky s _weetheart_ , though.

 

When the guy walked through the door, however, Bucky immediately understood, because Lord strike him down if the person shuffling nervously in front of him was a day over seventeen, let alone nearing thirty.

 

The kid (because that was what he was, honestly) was small, at least half-a-foot shorter than Bucky, if not more. He was skinny as _fuck,_ skin clinging tight to his bones in the shade of white that only came from being out of the sun and on medications for too long. His head was utterly bare, not even a scratch of growing stubble, his blue eyes childishly huge on his sunken face.

 

“Hey,” he greeted, soft and warm, and Sharon’s tinkling laughter covered Bucky’s scoff as she lightly pressed the kid’s shoulders, aiming him toward the second bed.

 

“Adorable,” she proclaimed. “Why don’t you get settled, honey, while I go get your IV and meds straightened out? James here won’t bite you, much as he looks it. Will you, James?” She shot him a look out of the corner of her eye, half-teasing and half-warning, but skipped out the door before he could snap at her, smart one that she was (had learned to be, he was proud of that), shutting the door quietly behind her and leaving them to the beeping of Bucky’s heart monitor.

 

 _“Adorable,”_ Bucky mocked immediately, a hard sneer to his tone as he leveled the kid with a look of his own. He hadn’t asked for a roommate, hadn’t wanted and still _didn’t_ want one, but when you were one arm short, living off of government aid, and _fucking dying,_ no one gave a damn about your need for privacy. A bed was a bed and a room was a room and tough shit.

 

He expected the kid to flush, or to stammer, or to get the hint and just stop _looking_ at him already, but instead smirk pulled across the other’s lips, snappy and _hard,_ his eyes lighting with something that was familiar to look at.

 

“Life sucks, yeah? I get it.” He chuckled harshly as he shed his jacket to the bed. His arms were stick-thin, Jesus, but he thrust one out anyway, what was left of its muscle straining against gravity to keep it in the air as he approached the bed. “Steve Rogers, transfer from SHIELD Medical, normally blonde, leukemia relapse. It’s a bitch. You?”

 

The kid’s – Steve’s – hand hovered pointedly in front of Bucky’s face, shaking but unrelenting in its goal to stay up. He could see it was an effort, the way Steve’s jaw was clenching, the tightening around his eyes. He reminded Bucky of his comrades overseas, all guts eve if there was nothing to back it. Steve was smaller than any of them, but he stood in such a fashion that Bucky reached out for his hand without a snarky retort.

 

“Ja-“

 

Their hands clasped and it hit.

 

It was nothing like his mother had told him and everything like his buddies in the war had described. A searing ache of fire across his lacking shoulder like a bullet from an enemy gun through the meat of his muscle. He could feel every inch of the name being burned into his skin like a signature and it _hurt worse than death_ but it soft, too. His mind was racing with a jumbled mess of reactions he couldn’t sort, because over it he could hear Steve’s startled, pained hiss as the action echoed on him, and Bucky looked up just in time to see Steve falter under the sensation, stumbling forward into the railing of Bucky’s bed, and he didn’t stop to think before he reached out, catching him with his one good arm.

 

His throat clenched suffocatingly tight at realization of how easily the smaller man fit against him.

 

His soulmate.

 

“Fate’s a _fucking whore_ ,” he muttered in wonderment.

 

“Wha-what does it say?” Steve demanded, sucking in hurried, shallow breaths as he chased after enough oxygen to settle himself, burrowed tight and desperate into his chest. _“What does it say? What does it say?”_

 

“I’m James,” he answered immediately, running the fingers of his one good hand directly under where he knew Steve bore his name. God, why _now?_ He wanted to scream, push Steve off, but he couldn’t let go. Why now? Why not _before?_ Christ, he could have had years of this, _they_ could have had years of this. “Call me Bucky.”


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

 

Stark Center was supposed to have been a good, quiet place to die.

 

The hospital was private, but well-funded – it branched out into a secluded part of the outer skirts of upper Manhattan, surrounded mostly by trees and grass and other wondrous aspects of nature the state wasn’t really recognized for having that even the massive parking lots hadn’t managed to destroy. The hospital was notorious for only taking in and catering to the most ill of patients, ones deemed too sick to treat by other facilities, and though he admired that, it had actually been the gardens he had been most looking forward to seeing – a walled-off section of the grounds opened solely to the patients and attending nurses, filled with an array of exotic flowers of every possible color that thrived under the therapeutic shade of the screened dome that capped it.

 

When Fury had approached him in his bed in SHIELD last week with an ominous, defeated expression, all Steve had been able to think about was that Stark Center, secluded and surrounded by those beautiful flowers in that peaceful setting, would be a good place to live out the rest of his now-numbered days.

 

He hadn’t even given a thought to the possibility of meeting his _soulmate_ inside of that building.

 

Bucky. Christ, Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes, thirty-one and worn down and, as Nurse Sharon had warned while leading him to his new room, “a bit of an ass, Steve”. The man who was supposed to have just been his roommate, whose name was now etched across his shoulder, who now wore Steve’s name impressed on his own.

 

Clasping hands with Bucky, feeling the surge of a bond reaching to anchor between them, had licked a fire alive in Steve’s gut. Bucky was all snark and snip and temper, but the eyes that had locked with his own had been fearful, the strong arm that had locked him to his chest desperate. “Fate’s a fucking whore”, Bucky had said, but Steve was pretty sure it was life that had screwed them over, the bitch. He hadn’t felt this alive in three years – just in time to die and lose it all, no matter the fight.

 

Ironically, though, he hadn’t been wrong. The garden, the reason he had chosen Stark Center at all, was beautiful. So incredibly different from SHIELD.

 

He wondered if Bucky ever came out here, ever walked around or sat down to enjoy the array of flowers, or if he even liked flowers, and felt an immediate response of churning coldness in his gut.

 

His soulmate, and he didn’t even know anything about him.

 

There was an empty, cushioned bench near the upper corner, almost hidden under the low branches of a prideful tree, not too far from the doors but back enough that they couldn’t really be seen, and Steve practically fell into it, the IV pole stopping just at the edge of the cement pathway. His lungs were burning and he hated it, the faint wheezing whistles pushing from his chest, the exhaustion that was already consuming him. He wasn’t prone to moments of self-pity so much anymore, not after this long, but just, right then … _it wasn’t fair_. It wasn’t fair that he was sick, that Bucky was sick, that Bucky was his soulmate and that they had met _here_ , in a _hospita_ l, in a hospital where he had come to _die-_

 

“Hey, uh… is it alright if I, uh, sit here?”

 

The voice was soft and tentative and jolted Steve’s head up to the sight of a stranger.

 

The man was older than Steve, that much was obvious, though whether that obviousness was due to nature or to the worn look of illness was an unanswerable question to any but him. His t-shirt and grey-scrub pants combo matched Steve’s, exposing arms of sickened bruises and frail skin. But the eyes that met his own were a warm brown that smiled more than his lips, which twitched in anxious quirks of a timid grin that wasn’t sure if it wanted to come out or not.

 

“Sorry,” the man continued, still soft and cautious. “It’s just, sorry, I have a procedure in an hour, and this bench is the closest one to the doors. I’m sorry, I know it’s weird-.”

 

“No, hey, it’s fine,” Steve cut off, mind stumbling over the rapid amount of apologies even as he forced his body to move over to make room. The other man blinked, words dying abruptly as a small, barely-there grin finally managed to force itself out as he slowly took the proffered seat, seeming to push himself as close to the edge as possible, as if he wasn’t worthy of sharing it at all. Something about it unsettled Steve’s stomach, made his jaw clench at the implications, because they were all already sick, they shouldn’t feel worthless as human beings on top of it. And this man, older than him but just as unfortunate, looked as though he was honestly so damn sorry for burdening Steve with his presence, for introducing him to his existence at all. He was taller, bigger as so many were, but Steve reached out his hand in carefully slow motion, stopping only when the stranger’s eyes locked on his fingers. “I’m Steve. Rogers.”

 

His head tilted, shyness disappearing to old-wound suspicion as he inspected the offering. Steve hated the way his hand shook, hanging unsupported in midair, but just like with Bucky he kept it out – _you never take back a promise, Steven –_ trying to keep his fingers as still as possible as the man studied him and what he asked.

 

“You think it’s a good idea to make friends in a place like this?” It wasn’t said half as apologetic as the words before, just the smallest tremor of uncertainty, but more dry humor than anything. It made Steve smirk, because the bland doubtfulness was exactly what his mind had played out in imagining what the final stretch would hold, and it fell out of this man’s mouth perfectly. His expression, apparently, was enough of an answer, because the man shook his head with an amused huff.

 

“Bruce Banner,” he replied, and latched his hand to Steve’s.

 

It was different than with Bucky.

 

The brand of his soulmate had seared like fire across his shoulder, nothing short of the pain of an actual branding burn that had sucked out his breath and left him weak and sorrowful. This, however, swirled like the gentle warmth of a cloudy morning sunray, wrapping around his wrist in a safe, comforting hold. Air swelled gently in his lungs, the inhalation of a warm summer breeze, and for the first time in years he felt like he could stand, a strength surging into his bones that he had never experienced, and it felt good, it felt _great-_

 

“Son of a bitch,” the man – Bruce – was gasping out, sounding a little more alive than before. A little … angry. “Son of a bitch, son of a _bitch_.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Steve echoed, pulling back, _this was a nightmare, he was drugged and still at SHIELD,_ but Bruce’s grip was deceptively strong, keeping his smaller hand trapped and close.

 

“Don’t,” the older growled. “Just, shit, don’t apologize. It’s not- this isn’t your fault. I’m sorry, just please don’t-.”

 

“It’s not your fault either,” Steve snapped back, and finally he locked down at his wrist. Sure enough, there it was, curled like a falling bracelet and as permanent as a scar, _Bruce_ spiraled in silver lettering that glittered under the tree’s filtered sun. _Platonic_. He barked out harsh, disbelieving laughter. “First Bucky, and now you. I’ve been here less than three hours.” _I shouldn’t have come at all._

 

“Bucky?” Bruce was studying their grip still – Steve could barely make out the brown of his eyes darting back and forth between Steve’s new mark and his own – but his fingers relaxed just enough that they were no longer entrapping. He didn’t pull away. “You mean James? Uh, Barnes, right?”

 

“My roommate, and my full _soulmate_ , as of two hours ago.” He shrugged, an image of Bucky’s pained, defeated and angry eyes flashing through his mind. “Guess God decided I needed to experience a complete set before I kicked it.”

 

“Sucks,” Bruce intoned with a cringe, echoing his sentiments, and slowly retracted his grip, keeping his eye on the mark in anguished awe. “I’m sorry.”

 

“I know. You say that a lot,” he returned sardonically, shoving Bucky aside, grinning a little when Bruce finally met his gaze and slowly returned it. “Haven’t, uh, met yours then yet?” His platonic shook his head.

 

“No.” The smile turned a little sad. “Sorta hoping I don’t, actually. There’s … seriously no hope for me with this.” He blanched. “I don’t, you know, want them to have to experience it. Better to have not had, than to have and lost. Or something.”

 

“I hear you.” Steve kicked his IV pole gently, just to hear the rattle, belatedly realizing Bruce didn’t have one. He hadn’t been paying attention, not really. Hadn’t been paying attention to a lot of things, lately; hadn’t cared, didn’t care. Should he even care about this?

 

“Rogers!” A voice called out from the building’s doors. His head whipped around, startled, to the sight an expectant nurse propping one open, clipboard in his hand and eyes searching. He stood on reflex, years of manners drilled into his head in his mother’s warm, stern voice, and stumbled back just as quickly in head rush.

 

Bruce caught him.

 

“Easy,” the other man murmured in his ear. “Fainting before tests don’t make them any easier.” A low, bitter chuckle. “I’ve tried.”

 

“Me too.” The nurse had caught sight of him, eyebrows raised in inquiry, and he grabbed for his pole. Bruce hesitated in removing his support.

 

“I didn’t necessarily want friends,” he admitted, “but you’re not so bad. I’m in room 2012 on the same floor as you. It’s small enough that it’s a permanent single. You can, uh, stop by, if you want.” Steve could practically hear the _sorry_ reverberating on top of every word.

 

And maybe one of them should say it. Maybe Steve should have said it when Bucky was holding him, after he had burned the man’s shoulder with his name, maybe he should have said it again and again after Bruce had made him stop. It felt like something that _should_ be said, because _damn it._

 

Someone had to apologize for this.

 

* * *

 

 

Soothing painkillers and vitamins were making their way through the tube of his IV when they finally wheeled Bucky back in.

 

He looked wrecked, half out of it and miserable, a sickened pale tinge to his face. There were dark rings under his eyes, his arm still very much missing, all bravado and rage gone from his exhausted, worn-down body.

 

 _‘What do you need from me, Father, that you would bring us together now? Or at all?’_ Steve wondered, studying his soulmate silently as the brunette twitched under his blankets.

 

“Steeeve?” Bucky slurred, hand moving just barely. Just barely.

 

He already felt warmer.

 

“I’m here, Bucky,” he called back. “I’m right here.”

 

 _Sorry,_ he didn’t say.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

 

 

A throat cleared.

 

Finding your soulmate in a hospital was just all sorts of fucking wrong.

 

Bruce didn’t really suck on the cigarette in his mouth so much as cradled it between his cracked lips, the warmth soothing the skin breaks, the embers at its opening slowly fading away into a snuffed out death he had no intention of reigniting back into life. Resuscitation; stopping death, reversing the journey, prolonging the anticipation, the preparation, the inevitable. Do not pass Go, do not collect two-hundred dollars, return to fucking Start. Whatever. He didn’t see the point of it.

 

(Right now, they were scrambling in the back room – the machine that pushed medicine into his body to attack his sickness had broken that morning, for whatever damned reason machines broke in the twenty-first century. The techs were borderline hysterical, the doctors livid. Bruce… Bruce just rolled with it).

 

Death of anything was a natural occurrence. Nothing, neither human nor object, could last forever. Components would break down, structures would weaken, will and need would become exhausted. It was intended to be a relief, death. Something he had wanted, would have taken eagerly by the hand only months ago had Betty not walked into the damn room when she had –

 

Dark hair, fair skin, blue eyes that lit up in overwhelming joy at the slightest hint of another’s happiness – Betty was the only reason he had allowed himself to be admitted to Stark Center.

 

Nibbling slightly at the tobacco stick, he glanced down at the hand holding the cooled lighter.

 

 And then this had happened.

 

The silvery name wrapped around his wrist was two days old and still looked as fresh as it had when Steve’s shaking hold had tattooed it there. _Steve_. As small and unassuming as the man himself, it still felt warm, still felt reassuring, and it made his stomach twist in unpleasant knots to know that his own name was in the exact same shape on the other man’s own wrist. That wasn’t how the game was supposed to be played. He was supposed to have left this world in the same way he had lived it – alone, no marks received and no marks left (damn it, Betty), and yet there it was, written by the universe itself. _Steve._

 

Bruce’s only consolation was that Steve was as bitter and horrified about the entire thing as he was, was suffering _more_ than he was. At least the two of them were platonics. But to meet your actual intended on your literal death bed. Christ. He couldn’t … he couldn’t do that.

 

Another throat cleared – or rather, the same one. Without pulling the cigarette from his mouth, Bruce slowly turned his head toward the elderly woman sitting primly in one of the dozen or so chairs decorating the waiting area, glaring at him with an expectant expression. Somewhere inside of his chest, small and desperate, little Robert Banner wanted nothing more than to stutter out however many apologies it took to get the woman’s displeased look to melt away into approval; to forgive him, to like him. But Bruce wasn’t Robert – Bruce was covered in bruises; Bruce was on his second day of not being hungry enough to eat; Bruce _didn’t give a fuck._ He pushed the stick between his teeth and offered the woman a too-wide, too-angry smile, didn’t look away until she audibly huffed in disgust and turned toward the man beside her (husband? Poor guy) to undoubtedly complain. It wasn’t like he hadn’t left the window open (though honest-to-God, what better place to develop cancer?).

 

Steve approved of his smoking, appreciated the irony, applauded the choice. Smoking caused cancer? _“We already have that.”_

 

(Truth? Bruce didn’t want friends. He had Betty, or had had Betty, and that was enough, no thank you, never again, not fucking _here._ But Steve wasn’t so bad. Tiny, bald-headed, dying Steve, afflicted with leukemia that _just would not go away_ , just like Bruce. Steve who didn’t push, who didn’t tell Bruce to _try_ , didn’t believe in rainbows and unicorns and whatever happily ever after Doctor Wilson kept tossing at them in group. Steve who had Bucky, who didn’t want Bucky but _wanted Bucky_ , who wrapped around Bruce like a warm towel and just was there. That was all, it, everything. Two days, and he was just there. What even was that?).

 

“Bruce?” He turned his head again, finally letting his cigarette dip down as the pretty nurse (Brenda? No. Beth?) behind the desk beamed at him. “Sorry for the delay, honey. They’re ready for you now, if you want to head back.”

 

As if he could say no, and just return to his room.

 

Bruce wasn’t Robert, but he was still Bruce, and he nodded his thanks in a way that made Beth’s (it was totally Beth) smile soften like butter as he passed.

 

(And if he made sure to walk as close to the woman and her husband as possible, letting the dying traces of smoke dance from his body to their noses, well … he was still Bruce).

 

* * *

 

 

There was a malfunctioning piece of equipment at the hospital that was baffling the fuck out of the techs, and that was how it happened.

 

It was revolutionary, shiny, spectacular, and was _actually being used for life-saving procedures,_ so when Pepper mentioned that it was going faulty, he fucking went.

 

And he went in civilian clothes, thank you, complete with a billed-hat that shadowed his admittedly well-known features. The staff at the center knew who he was, of course, but the visitors didn’t, and the patients didn’t, and that was all that mattered, keeping himself safe from the visitors (who either wanted his autograph for celebrity lust, or wanted his money because their loved one had died in his hospital) (sometimes, _sometimes,_ they wanted his help, wanted to plead the case of the patient they were visiting, beg him to make something, anything to help, and _fuck those times_ , but they rarely happened, because people were still people), and keeping the patients calm (because while it was a big deal when the _owner_ of the facility you were living in showed up, could mean budget cuts, which could mean _death_ , and just no. The less they knew about his presence, the happier they were, the _healthier_ they were). Though he, of course, claimed it was the former.

 

Tony Stark did not care about strangers, what the fuck?

 

The machine was, thank God, not on the bottom floor – Tony avoided the Children’s Ward like the plague, couldn’t breathe from hearing the whimpers and sobs of the _babies_ fighting an unseen illness in agony. It was, however, in the more critical section of the Center, which was almost as bad. He shivered under the onslaught of silence, the steady beeping of heart monitors and the hiss of breathing machines. If he focused (and he didn’t), he could hear the sounds of gut-wrenching vomiting, angry weeping struggling to be quiet (to be strong), the soft voices of nurses trying to comfort. He paid attention to none of it (all of it), following a tech nurse as he led the way toward the troublesome machine.

 

It was in a large room, with walls covered in jungle-esque scenery (seriously? Really? Who the fuck had approved that?) that contained a lot of green and no animals (small favors). Against the backdrop, the machine gleamed white in futuristic perfection, but remained silent in stubborn rebellion. The tech was babbling away, most likely repeating back everything they had already tried, but Tony was already moving toward it.

 

_‘Alright, you fucker. Let’s talk.’_

 

It took two hours to get the machine humming again, and he made a mental note to discuss new Stark techs with Pepper – the damn thing hadn’t been hooked up right, had no foundation to support itself on, how the fuck long had patients been using it in this condition, _shit._ He gave it a few more whirls, made sure it moved and reacted accordingly (under his hand, it did, they always did, his babies), and assured the still-hovering tech nurse and newly-arrived doctor that _yes, it will work just fine now, it’s perfectly safe to be used,_ when another doctor came in, asking the same questions, because there was a patient needing the room for treatment, and Tony was quick to leave.

 

(He loved what they did here – next to his work, Stark Center was the most important thing to him. But he couldn’t … he couldn’t see these people. The people they helped (didn’t help, couldn’t save). He had to be separated from it, had to distance himself. Couldn’t _touch that.)_

 

The universe hated him; he bumped into the guy at the doorway in his haste, and his body ignited.

 

It was worse than a torch burn, worse than the heat of the desert sand, worse than the shrapnel that had shoved into his chest and the subsequent hard surgery that he had been awake for, because he _didn’t want it to stop_. It radiated like the sun from his shoulder, being stabbed again and again and again; he wanted to latch onto it, to drive in that knife himself – he gasped for air to keep himself going, could hear the guy in front of him gasping for the same. He stepped away, just a breath, enough to _think,_ but it was still there.

 

He was just a little taller than Tony, barely enough to make a real difference, but still enough that he had to look up (and he _did)_ into eyes as brown as his own, just as wide, just as anguished. His hair was short, buzzed so close to his head that it was almost non-existent; his face thin and pale and somehow still defined. Clothed in the basic cruel grey of patient scrubs that brought out the dark sets of red and purple bruising on his arms – he was nothing special to look at, _he wasn’t_ , but Tony could feel the engraved burning on his shoulder ( _no, no, **no** )_, saw the man’s thin hand move up to rub at his own, and that … that was it.

 

“Bruce?” The doctor from inside the room called out, curious and intrusive. Tony growled, _growled_ , but the man, Bruce, looked over him toward the room.

 

“I should –  sorry, I should go,” he said, unsure but strong, a strong hint of cigarette smoke on his breath that made Tony heady. “Will… shit, sorry, I can’t – will you-?”

 

“I’ll be right here.” He said it firmly, not thinking. But it brought a shy, distressed smile to Bruce’s face, and he gave a jerky nod, stepping around him. The sudden distance felt cold, overwhelming – Bruce kept walking away.

 

Tony turned, watching Bruce approach the room and the machine ( _the damned machine)_ with an unnatural, uncaring confidence, heard the tech nurse tsk “no IV again?” and Bruce’s quiet response of “Tried, but it blew another vein. The PICC line’s in. Here-.” Before the door closed firmly between them.

 

A new nurse approached, a polite smile on his face as he offered to show Tony out, but he ignored him, instead darting toward the nearest staff bathroom and locking the door with violent desperation. The strength from his promise to Bruce washed from his face like a waterfall the moment he caught sight of his pale, slack face. With frenzied movements he would later forever deny, he knocked the hat from his head and tore at his shirt until it was tight as a rope around his neck, twisting his body until he could see the name sloppily engraved in burned black across his skin.

* * *

 

 

Stripped down and immobile under the machine, Bruce couldn’t breathe.

 

_Fuck, just fuck, fuck, please, ~~why, please~~_


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

 

 

“Least favorite color?”

 

Just beneath Bucky’s heart, agony ratcheted up in waves that would have been intolerable had he not been so used to them. It was as if his ribs were attempting to come together at their points, pushing his organs together in compact packing as they struggled to lock him up, protect him from further intrusion and pain. The pressure was suffocating; the slightest weight against his upper abdomen sent him reeling in a whirlpool of nausea, a punch to the gut – he wanted nothing more than to stand up, or bend over. To kneel on the floor on his hand and knees and press his forehead to the filthy tile of his room and ride it out, as he had done so many times before.

 

But he didn’t.

 

Instead, he sucked his lower lip between his teeth and worried the frail skin until the sharp sting from his mouth warred with the blunt pain of his abdomen, swallowing down whimpers with words, because Steve was sitting on the next bed over, shivering beneath his scrubs in visible tremors, eyes oddly focused on Bucky’s every move despite the tube slowly bleeding red liquid into his veins.

 

“Uh… yellow,” the younger man answered, licking at his lips – he wasn’t allowed to drink anything for the duration of the treatment, the already dry skin of his lips paler for it. Something jolted in Bucky’s gut that he didn’t let himself contemplate.

 

“Like, sunflower yellow? Or jaundice yellow?” He tried. Steve’s face scrunched up in disgust.

 

“Faded butter yellow, to… be exact. Though now it’s jaundice yellow, thanks. Least favorite animal?”

 

Another wave of pain. “Cats,” he said firmly. “Fuck cats, Steve, seriously.”

 

They had been playing this game for the entirety of the two days they had known each other, the first question of “favorite food?” from Steve’s mouth setting off the endless round of questions Bucky didn’t even know how to stop. Everything had quickly switched over to “least favorite” when it became apparent that there was very little Steve _didn’t_ like, making it near impossible for him to answer any of the questions. The other man maintained that it was a good way to pass time, a way to keep his mind occupied while the drugs worked their way into his system, but Bucky wasn’t stupid enough to not see what was happening. Learning about each other, the lives they had lived that the other hadn’t witnessed, the likes and dislikes of an outside world they weren’t a part of, a future they wouldn’t experience. They were glimpses, nothing deep, nothing too much, too holding. He wondered if Steve thought it was safer that way – if _he_ thought it was safer that way.

 

He wasn’t sure.

 

“I kinda like cats.” The response drew Bucky back. He watched as the thin arm the IV bled into shifted, caught the glimmer of silver writing on the equally thin wrist and swallowed, the pain clenching again at the sound of a forcefully calm breath. “I want a cigarette,” Steve admitted suddenly, decisively. “And I want to smoke it.”

 

“Thanks for clarifyin’ that, really. Was worried you might wanna use it to stab me or somethin’.” Steve snorted and Bucky had to bite down the urge of a too-painful laugh, settling for a strained smirk. “Cheer up, pal. Ya know Bruce’ll bring ya one when he’s done.”

 

“Maybe,” Steve agreed with a small, tainted smile. “If hasn’t smoked them all, the addict.”

 

Bruce, the name the silver spelled out on Steve’s wrist, another distraction from that pain that wracked his body. Waking up from his tests with the expectation for Steve to have been a dream, only to see him sitting there beside him, waiting, had left his thoughts oddly fuzzy. The sight of the newly minted soulmark, platonic though it was, wrapped on his soulmate’s skin had been a douse a chilled water.

 

(It was hard to tell who felt worse about the occurrence – him, Steve, or _Bruce Banner_. They all knew what it was, finding your soulmate after your death warrant had been placed in your hand, already dated and signed. Pathetic, hopeless – a bullet to the chest when there was already a noose around your neck – something you didn’t want, or want to bestow. Banner had amplified guilt to Steve’s misery yesterday when they had finally met, and Bucky had choked on it. Not jealousy, just … sorrow. Pain. He and Banner both in agreement in that – Steve would suffer twice over).

 

He opened his mouth, preparing to fire out another question (any stupid, pointless question), when a sharp, questioning rap of knuckles echoed along the wood of their door. Steve’s tiny body jolted in surprise, a flare of resulting pain in his eyes that Bucky could practically _feel_ as he shot over a curious look. It wasn’t time for his treatment to end yet – another two fucking hours to go of it – so it wasn’t Sharon at the door.

 

 _“What?”_ Bucky grouched loudly, ignoring the pointed glare Steve’s expression took on as the latch clicked and the door slowly cracked open.

 

Doctor Wilson’s head popped in, eternally friendly eyes instantly landing on their faces as a sly smile began to beam on his own.

 

“Great, you guys are awake. You up for a visitor, Steve? James? I promise he’ll behave.” The door opened the rest of the way before either of them could reply, revealing Banner’s disheveled form shielded behind him. “Seriously, he’s completely out of energy. Totally trashed out the rec room _and_ my office. Nurse Sharon will bring his IV pole around in a bit. He’ll be good. Right, Banner?” There was no threat in Wilson’s words as he directed them at the quiet man, just the same old gentle understanding the doctor was famous for, and yet Banner didn’t look up, or say anything at all.

 

“Bruce?” Steve was struggling to push himself up, face morphing into a frown that both concerned and pain, and Bucky leapt at the chance, jumping carefully from his bed to push the younger man back down. The stab in his abdomen lessened slightly enough for a breath of easy air as he moved toward the door.

 

“Banner, get in here,” he barked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder pointedly as he level Wilson with a look. “ _You._ We’re good. Go.” He stepped aside enough to let the other patient through, eyes narrowing as the doctor shook his head with a smile, already stepping away. Bucky shut the door without so much as a by-your-leave, turning back to his acquired soulmate and the man curled tightly into the recliner resting between their beds.

 

Trembling, held together by pieces and threads.

 

“Bruce?” Steve questioned again, tentative and soft. Banner looked up, and it was then that Bucky noticed the burn of red that had inundated the white of his eyes, the exhausted turn of his mouth that twitched in spasms of want and something he couldn’t name.

 

“I-is that Red Devil?” He waved toward the bag of red above Steve’s head, his voice as rough as the Afghan desert. He visibly swallowed in a way that had to hurt like hell, left him gasping a bit even as he shoved out more words. “Really?”

 

“No. It’s a variant. Experimental,” Steve answered before Bucky could, but was shaking his head. “Stop stalling, Bruce. What’s going on?”

 

Banner was still shaking, violent minute shivers that reverberated up his arms and across his shoulders and down his body. In his scrubs, arms bruised and body pale, he looked enough like Steve to pass for an older brother, a future reflection of nonexistent time. The same forceful breaths, the same attempt to be _better than this_.

 

“I … I didn’t realize it would hurt, like it did,” the older man whispered, and somehow Bucky knew what he was talking about even as his hand reached for his shoulder.

 

“Fuck,” he whispered, twining with Steve’s whimper.

 

“God, Bruce-.”

 

“It was like … being shot,” the man continued, rubbing the spot in the same movements they both still did – gentle massages, erasing and soothing. “A gun whose mouth was already hot, pressed against my shoulder and fired. Over, and over. But there’s no blood. It hurts, and there’s no blood.” He looked up, eyes tracing over Bucky, and then Steve. “There should be blood, right?”

 

“Who was it?” Steve demanded, and again Bucky found himself gently pushing down on a fragile chest, keeping his the smaller man pinned to his bed. “Where are they?”

 

“Huh. I don’t…” They all flinched at the sudden, violent burst of hysterical laughter that erupted from Banner’s mouth. It sounded like Bucky’s mouth had tasted for the past two days. “I don’t _know._ He – he was supposed to meet me in the lobby, after my test, but I didn’t… I didn’t _see him_ and I was just … _fuck._ I was … _angry._ I didn’t really look. Or ask. I just-.”

 

 _Wanted to break something,_ Bucky didn’t say. _Wanted to hurt something._

 

Steve was shaking under Bucky’s hand, tense and visibly straining not to move against him, but Banner didn’t finish his tirade, didn’t offer more. Instead he dug into the pocket of his pants and pulled out the already familiar pack, ripping out a cigarette and lighting it before Bucky could blink. The bitter scent of nicotine filled the room within seconds, silence to accompany it outside of the hard breaths the man was sucking in.

 

And then, without warning, Banner’s shoulders slumped, his body falling in on itself in crippled defeat that was painful in its truth to witness.

 

 “… Can you smoke when you’re on that?” It was wounded, tired, aimed toward Steve and the world as a whole. The pack waved out, the green lighter gleaming, and with a split second’s hesitation Bucky let go of Steve and reached for both, raising his eyebrows as Banner’s sorrowful eyes lifted to his own.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“You _left him_.”

 

There should have been a question mark in there, something to imply the disbelief that should have accompanied his admission, but there wasn’t, and he flinched under the verbal lash of judgment.

 

Pepper Potts was nearly everything Tony needed in his life, with her sharp attentiveness and natural refusal to be intimidated by him; which apparently the universe agreed with, as he wore her name along his wrist like an always polished charm bracelet. At the time, he had felt the pang of disappointment that her name hadn’t branded into his shoulder like a claim, because Pepper was competent, beautiful, _perfect._

 

Competent, beautiful, perfect Pepper, staring him down in quickly building fury.

 

“Alright, you sound mad,” he observed cautiously, even if his chest punched lead to his heart at the reminder.

 

“I am mad!” She snapped, the heel of her stiletto clipping harshly as her foot stomped in her irritation. “What the hell, Tony? Can you imagine how he must feel, walking out there and you being _gone? After you promised to be there when he got out?”_

 

“To be honest, I’m trying not to.”

 

And that was the truth. For three hours and seventeen minutes he had been staring at one display screen or another, bringing up the most complicated schematics of his largest unfinished projects, throwing his attention into equations and drafts and outcomes, trying to pull up images of futuristic blue instead of the skeletal, dying frame of his _soulmate_.

 

(Wide brown eyes and purple-bruised skin and warmth, warmth and _pain_ , **Bruce** , on his shoulder-)

 

“You _promised him, Tony!”_ Pepper pushed in front of him, thrusting her tall frame between his face and the screen that JARVIS immediately closed down without prompting. Her blue eyes were raging, a firestorm echoed in the sunny red of her hair, and she really was gorgeous. Classic, lustful beauty, more vibrant, fuller, more _alive_ than Bruce – fuck, why _couldn’t it have been her?_

 

“I didn’t want it to stop.”

 

The anger in her eyes died away in a flash to confusion. “What?”

 

“It hurt, when we touched. Like it’s supposed to. Hurt more than Afghanistan, than the reactor, than having that hole carved into my chest. Hurt like … all of it, everything, all the pain I’ve ever felt in my life wrapped into one moment. Burning into me. And I didn’t want it to stop.” He took in a shuddering breath, closing his eyes as her hands immediately came up to frame his face. She wasn’t completely his, but she was his enough that even when she was angry, she was comforting him. Holding him. He _needed it._

 

“Because you want him, Tony,” Pepper whispered, fingers moving to sweep through his hair.  “You need him.”

 

“He’s dying _,_ Pep.” Because that was the truth, too. Bruce … used that machine. That machine Tony built, to save lives it wasn’t saving because they couldn’t really be saved. A laugh bubbled up his throat like carbonation, spilling out in embarrassingly high-pitched gasps. Somewhere off to the side, he could hear Dum-E whirr in concern. “What, what am I supposed to do with that? He’s _dying_ , why would I bring him into my life if he’s just going to leave it?”

 

He dipped his head into the crook of her neck and reveled in her sigh, in the weight of her head against his and the continued scratch of her nails.

 

“He already is, Tony. Whether you go to him or not, get to know him or not. You can’t make that decision.” She swiped her fingers across his shoulder, where the mark was, and he shuddered, pushing in closer. Fuck. “He’s already here.”

 

And didn't that suck?


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

 

 

The children’s rec room was empty by the time Steve made it to the lower floor.

 

His lungs were heavy, as if he had submerged his entire head into a pool of liquid lead and sucked in until he just couldn’t anymore – each huff of breath was a vacuum of fire inside his throat that wasn’t quite reaching the rest of his body. His fingers were a cold sort of numb, just shy of being sensationless, and the only way he was entirely sure that his feet even existed was the fact that they were there every time he looked down to check. But his head was strangely clear without the usual spinning to upset his balance, and he still had enough strength in his empty bones to support being vertical – overall, he was doing much better than he had anticipated after being pumped full of experimental drugs (“if it doesn’t hurt,” he remembered Fury grumbling, “then it’s ineffective and not worth a damn.”)

 

From the doorway, he could see Bruce hunched over a small, plastic yellow table, bald head ducked as his hand scrubbed furiously at the surface with a rag. The purple bruises spotting his arms were more vibrant than ever under the strain, the slightest hint of dying muscle apparent with the force of the rapid movements. The glint of his silvery soulmark, still (ever) an unfamiliar sight, sparked a bloom of nauseous warmth in Steve’s gut, churning like an undigested meal.

 

“Hey,” he called out quietly, the greeting hot-cold on his tongue as he tried not to startle his friend. Bruce jerked regardless, head snapping up, though the furrow of his brows faded to a wry smile as his eyes took Steve in.

 

“I let them use permanent markers, because the colors come out better on the thicker paper,” he explained, waving a hand over the table. “Life lesson I learned as a child that I obviously forgot as an adult? Never let an angry kid use something that can be destructive to property, because they will make it destructive to property.”

 

Steve laughed a little as he stepped into the room, his IV pole clacking obnoxiously over the entry strip before falling silent atop the carpeted floor. He noted that, yet again, Bruce didn’t have one. “Sounds like you had a good time,” he observed lightly. “Not too sure that’s the point of a punishment, though.”

 

Bruce snorted. “It’s not really a punishment. Wilson just thinks he’s clever. They assigned me to the kids to get me out of the way upstairs, distract me. Our rec room clean yet? His office?”

 

“I don’t know about the rec room, I didn’t go around to look.” Steve lowered himself carefully onto the table’s attached bench, glancing down at the floor as he did so – yep, still there. “But I walked with Bucky down to Doctor Wilson’s office before I came here; it doesn’t look like it’s been touched.” He offered the last bit with an exaggerated expression of suspicion, just to make Bruce laugh – it earned him a muted, self-deprecating chuckle.

 

“Oh I trashed it,” he assured, adding a bit more force to his scrubbing, making the table shake. “Broke his potted plants, shredded his books, ripped up his papers, snapped his pens – he probably had someone bring in a desk from one of the other offices if he has one _now,_ because I left that pretty unusable.” The words were leaving Bruce’s mouth like detached facts read from a page instead of relived in memory. “And since not even Stark Center’s got that kind of crew around twenty-four-seven, there’s doubtless two or three new paintings in his office – or maybe another bookshelf – to cover the holes I made in the walls.” His hands shook as he scrubbed _harder_ , and Steve broke, reaching out to snag his fingers around his soulmate’s marked wrist.

 

“Lord, Bruce, stop, just – sit down for a minute. _Sit._ Talk to me. You barely said a word yesterday.” He pulled gently, just enough pressure to urge the other man down across from him, the rag abandoned in its soppy mess on the table. “What did Doctor Wilson say when you told him what happened?”

 

Bruce hesitated, and then sighed, shoulders slumping as Steve kept the contact on his wrist. “I didn’t,” he admitted lowly. “He didn’t ask – he _never_ fucking asks – so I didn’t tell him. Just let him think it was one of my “episodes” he’s always so keen on me letting out. They put you on suicide watch here for this, you know – having a healthy soulmate, if you’re dying. And I am definitely doing that, if nothing else.” He laughed a little, throwing his head onto the table with a muted _thud._ “Fuck, Steve. Just … fuck. I haven’t even looked at it, the name. I don’t … I don’t want to know. You’re so damned lucky that yours is dying, too.”

 

Even though it was the truth, even though he had said as much countless times ever since he had gained his mark, the cold hollowness that settles in Steve’s stomach at Bruce’s words was swallowing. On the day that he had been born, the universe had dictated that Bucky belonged to him, and he to Bucky. His mother, until the day that she had died, had sworn by the belief and promises of soulmates, had filled him with stories since he had been a child. Someone who would always be with him, would share a life and happiness with him, who would be there for him and need him there in return. Someone to _build a life with, have a family with, to make memories with._

 

“I wish he wasn’t.” The words punched their way from his mouth without permission, kept rolling as Bruce completely stilled. “I wish he wasn’t, Bruce. I wish _I_ wasn’t, now that I have him. I want to spend years with him, get to know him outside of our stupid twenty-questions game. I want to know what he looks like out in the sun, or fresh out of the shower. I want to hear how he laughs when he’s not drugged up, or how he yells when he’s just angry at a football game and not some doctor. I want see what he eats when he’s actually hungry, or go shopping with him to pick out wall art for his apartment. I want to _hug him_ , without all those damn machines and wires or these stupid poles.” His hand shook his own pointedly. “I want … Bruce, I want to know what he looks like when he’s falling asleep just to _sleep_. I want to know if I could really fall in love with him, want him for more than just my name on his shoulder. I want to see if that’s real. I want the time to get to know that, and I’m not going to get it.” Steve sighed, suddenly sick, suddenly exhausted, suddenly everything at once and nothing at all. “We’re not going to get it.”

 

The drawing across from his freehand, wet and unyielding, was scribbled in violent purple – the stick figure of someone bearing a frown and fangs and swirls from the mouth like unworded sorrow.  

 

“I thought you didn’t want that, Steve.” Bruce’s voice was quiet, hesitant, the guilt so apparent it was suffocating, and for some reason it brought the smile back to Steve’s face.

 

“I just … don’t want to want it, I guess.” Looking up, he shook his head quickly at the stricken look on his friend’s face, squeezing his still-captured wrist gently (“I’m not a good guy. I’ll probably be a crappy platonic. Sorry, you know, in advance”). “Hey, no, Bruce, it’s fine. I needed … I think I needed to say that. Maybe. We don’t, Bucky and I – we don’t. Talk. About that. About what we want.”

 

Steve felt Bruce’s hard inhale more than he heard it, witnessed the minute flinch in the flicker of his eyelashes and the downward twist of his mouth. It was gone in the next blink, replaced with a banishing smirk. “You probably should talk about. Can’t hurt. The kids were telling me a new phrase today, what was – yolo?”

 

“ _Funny,_ ” Steve responded dryly, but his smile loosened into a less painful state, and Bruce laughed lightly in return. He looked back down at the drawing, the dark swirls and angry face that, if he tilted his head right, looked more anguished than destructive. An inner pain hidden underneath fury; he could relate all too well. “You know,” he added, “I was sick a lot, as a kid; it sucked. Drew a lot of pictures like this. Melodramatic as anything, but … it made me feel better, looking at them, pinning them up on my wall so other people could see what I was feeling. I just wanted people to see what I was feeling.” He tapped the picture. “You should leave it.”

 

Bruce, too, looked down at the table, pulse thumping contently under thin skin against Steve’s thumb. He hummed a little, thoughtful.

 

“The nurses’ll hate it,” he muttered, but when his gaze flickered up to Steve, there was nothing but mischief, understanding that made Steve swallow. Bruce was good at this, understanding people, reading them when he knew there was something to be read. It was unnerving and peaceful all at once.

 

Asshole.

 

* * *

 

 

Sam Wilson’s office was nothing quite like Bucky would have ever thought of when imagining a therapist’s office.

 

“So how are you doing, James?”

 

“Well, Sam, I have a terminal illness inside of my body that is currently taking an extremely fucking long time to fucking kill me. Same as yesterday actually, and the day before, and pretty much every day since the very _first_ time you asked me. But, as always, I would like to thank you for taking a few seconds of your time to ask and see if that’s still the case, very thoughtful. Very nice.”

 

“I’m sure your outlook of everything is great, from the floor’s vantage point. Comfortable?”

 

“Doc, I am _peachy keen.”_

 

There was the usual décor, of course – dark cherrywood bookshelves packed full of countless books and a dark cherrywood desk (that he immediately recognized as not the usual desk; way to go, Banner) of neatly organized stacks of paper; a long, cushioned leather bench in a navy blue that looked as ridiculous as it felt. There were framed pictures all over the wall, but instead of the expected scenery, or motivational sayings, they were large, blown-up pictures of Wilson, which was everything went a little different than tradition. Some pictures of were of him with other patients, men and women who had either miraculously walked out of the Center in remission or left in a body bag. Some were of what he had told everyone was an old veteran’s center, done in black and white, where he had served as a volunteer. Most, however, were of him in combat gear, standing amongst similarly dressed men and women with backdrops of Humvees and desert sands. One, a little smaller than the rest and hanging in the center of the wall across from the desk, was of Wilson with his arm swung around his soulmate, a man with bright features under the desert sun and an even brighter smile.

 

(The day Steve’s name had burned into Bucky’s shoulder, Wilson had shown him his own soulmark, scarred white on his skin in death. _Riley)._

 

“Do I even want to know what your pain level is on the one-to-ten scale?”

 

From his stretched out position on the floor, Bucky cracked open an eye to see the amused brown eyes peering down at him – what kind of fucking doctor sat on an exercise ball instead of at his own fucking desk? (A good one).

 

“Dilaudid,” he quipped back, reflexively rubbing his ribs at the thought.. “You moved some of these pictures around.”

 

“Yep,” Wilson chirped back cheerfully, bouncing a little on the ball as he surveyed the room. “Had to cover all the holes someone made. Not that one, though.” Bucky’s eyes followed the direction of the indicative nod to the picture of Riley. “Hurting and mad as hell, and they still didn’t even go near that one.”

 

_Banner’s a good guy,_ Bucky thought, a twist of approval in his spine that didn’t reach the numb tingling in his ribs as he closed his eyes again. “Lucky you.”

 

Wilson snorted. “Yeah, lucky me. You don’t want to talk about your health, okay. Let’s talk about how lucky _you_ are, then. How’re things with you and Steve?”

 

_Me and Steve? Steve, my soulmate Steve? Steve who prays to God every night to thank him for this life, even though he’s being robbed of it? Steve, with me. Me and Steve._ “We’re good, dying together. Classic soulmate tragedy thing – Romeo and Juliet without the melodrama and underage sex. You wish you had died overseas with Riley, Doc?”

 

It was a low blow that immediately made Bucky cringe, but when he opened his eyes once more Wilson was just staring down at him in sickening understanding.

 

“Every damned day, man. Fall asleep wanting it, wake up cursing that it didn’t happen. Every day,” the doctor answered solemnly. The ball wobbled, and the man sighed. “Alright, you don’t want to talk; you can lay there for the next two hours, since you’re so good there. But if you’re not going to talk to me, you should at least talk to Steve. Soulmates, they’re … they’re something else, James. Have you told him?”

 

Unbidden, an image of his mother’s agonized face floated in his mind; Bucky wondered if he could actually feel the heat of her tears, or if memory was actually capable of reproducing the feeling. “Why would I? Doesn’t change anything.”

 

“It could.”

 

Bucky closed his eyes again. Carpet was so much more soothing than tile, and Steve wasn’t here.

 

“It won’t.”

 

* * *

 

 

The blinds over their window were only ever opened at night.

 

“You need to take this the next time you go to the bathroom, Steve.” Nurse Sharon was unusually firm as she pressed the tiny cup holding glistening suppository into his hand. She waited for his silent nod before checking over his IV, ticking notes on her chart before shooting a glance over to Bucky’s bed.

 

“I’m fine, fuck off, your rotation’s over, go to bed,” his soulmate growled; Steve swallowed down the hard lump of empty laughter as the nurse rolled her eyes, patted his arm, and left the room.

 

Left the room to the beeping of machines and the deafening silence of everything else.

 

Yolo? _Talk to him Steve._

 

He opened his mouth-

 

“I’m fuckin’ tired as shit," Bucky groaned in a vulgar slur, twisting his body until it was burrowed in the covers, angled away from Steve. "I’m goin’ to sleep. Night, Stevie. Don’t forget to take that thing.”

 

-“Night, Bucky.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

 

 

There were days when Bruce was sure that he hated Betty Ross.

 

Days where he was wrapped around the toilet, muscles straining and head pounding as his stomach violently emptied out contents that weren’t there, his throat burning and dry – days where it was only the steady, soft hands of the nurses beneath his arms and against his sides that kept him from falling to the ground – days that he spent in bed, torn between staring blankly at the ceiling or the television or crying as quietly as possible into his pillows for reasons he couldn’t name – days where his mind and body didn’t connect, where thoughts ran rampant and chaotic and not close enough to keep him from messing himself – days where he was given help he didn’t ask for, and had no choice but to take it.

 

(“ _Please, Bruce. I need … I need you to try. If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for me._ ”)

 

Today, he hadn’t quite decided how he felt about her.

 

His body balanced precariously on the edge of his bed as he carefully slipped his feet into the electric green Crocs the kids in the Children’s Ward got such a kick out of him wearing, cringing against the clash of their brightness to the empty grey of his pants. But they hid the near-translucent paleness of his skin from view, the large purplish-black bruise reaching up from the middle of his left foot to his ankle, and they were light, free of the weight of tennis shoes that just dragged him down. The tiny holes were funny though, on a good day, and sometimes the kids would draw eyes and teeth on them while he sat, content into making his feet into either alligators or dinosaurs (depending on their game of the day) for him to lazily kick about while he rested. All things considered, Crocs – not the worst part of his life.

 

(“ _Don’t make me find you like that, Bruce. **Don’t do that to me**_.”)

 

Carefully, he stood up. The sooner he got to the kids, the sooner he could be done, the sooner he could have a cigarette and go to the courtyard, he was tired of the sight of his bed, the proximity of the bathroom, the accusing gleam of the oxygen mask from the sun shining through the window-

 

“Room 2012?” A voice burst out, making Bruce jump. “Really? Is this supposed to be … morbidly humorous? The Apocalypse room? The Room of the End? The – whoa, _hey! Easy,_ buddy!”

 

A warm hand caught his upper arm as his balance protested the suddenness of his surprise, keeping him from slamming back into his bed (or worse, the floor). A trickle of warmth tickled up his arm at the feel of calloused fingers against his skin, and in reflex Bruce looked up, breath lost at the familiar image of shaded eyes and covered head.

 

“Easy,” the man holding him repeated softly, not letting go despite the uncomfortable expression beginning to form on his face, the sensation growing to a pleasant burn. Carefully, Bruce pulled away, relieved at how easily he was let go, caught in the eyes that weren’t looking away and the hand he used to brace himself against his bed.

 

“So,” his soulmate ( ** _shit_** ) muttered, biting at a lower lip framed by a neatly trimmed goatee. “Bruce. There’s uh, there’s no Bruce listed in the Center’s system. Like, anywhere.”

 

 _‘And you’ve been all through the Center’s system, then?’_ He meant to say, but what came out was, “It’s really Robert. Bruce is my middle name. My _chosen name_ , actually. Hence…” Bruce waved his free hand in the man’s upper body, where his name supposedly was scarred across his shoulder.

 

The man was nodding, his own hands twisting together. “Right, no, that makes sense. I should have thought about that. Should have … fuck, I’m … sorry.” A quirked, tight smile. “I’m bad at this, meeting people thing. Um, soulmates. Bad at soulmates. My platonic says it all the time. ‘Tony, if the universe hadn’t decided we were good for each other, I’d walk out right now.’ Granted, it’s usually after I’ve missed a meeting or showed up jacked on caffeine, which, in my defense, I _need_ -.”

 

“’Tony’?” Bruce blurted, attention so caught by the name that he interrupted him. His soulmate – _Tony_ – paused, hands freezing mid-action.

 

“…Yes?” He responded uncertainly. “Sorry, too fast? Too much? Pepper says I lose people when I ramble. That’s my platonic, I mean, _she’s_ my platonic. Pepper, I mean. Platonic Pepper. Don’t tell her I called her that, she _hates_ it.”

 

_**Tony.** _

“I didn’t know your name.” Bruce swallowed, what little wetness gifted to his throat this morning suddenly gone at the acknowledgement that there was actually shape and meaning to the marks on his shoulder. Tony was quiet again. “I didn’t – I haven’t looked. I didn’t…” God, he was such an ass. It didn’t matter. He was an ass.

 

“Hey, it’s cool.” Tony’s voice was low, but there was another smile on his face, lasting longer than the first one. “If you ignore it, maybe it’ll go away, right? That’s how I solve everything I don’t want to … deal with or whatever. Seriously, you’re fine, don’t do that, I tried to ignore you too. Is that better? I tried to ignore you too. We’re even.”

 

“You did just say you checked the Center’s system for me,” Bruce pointed out wryly, his stomach cramping a little. “Cracking into a relatively secure server just to find me doesn’t really say “ignoring”. No offense.”

 

“Yeah, well.” Tony finally looked down, scratching at the hat covering his head in a sheepish gesture that pulled at Bruce’s suspicions. With an audible, deep sigh, the hat was pulled off. “It’s not exactly difficult, when you’re the one who designed the system. Seriously. Could’ve done it in my sleep. I’m not actually convinced that I didn’t when I was looking for you, really.” The sunglasses were removed too, and Tony looked back up.

 

Bruce’s world began spinning again. His hand tightened on the frame of the bed.

 

“Tony _Stark_.” Tony Stark the billionaire. Tony Stark the genius. Tony Stark, the man who owned Stark Center.

 

_He fucking hated Betty._

Tony was completely miserable in front of him, a mess of expressions on his face that Bruce subconsciously wondered if he should feel guilty for, again fidgeting with his hands. Truthfully, the man wore his unease in manner that suggested that he felt like he was trespassing in this hospital, invading a space he wasn’t welcome in, rather than the attitude of someone who viewed the ill as lesser; too slow to die.

 

“I’m fucking all of this up, aren’t I?” Tony asked quietly, looking down again. Bruce watched as he butted his toes into the tile of the floor, scuffing his shoe. “I’m good at that too. In fact, my talent in that particular area? Limitless.”

 

Damn it.

 

“Don’t take all the credit,” Bruce chided gently in spite of himself. He couldn’t help it – the other man looked so … pitiful, like a child berated too hard and too publicly by their parents. “I’m not doing too hot here either.” As if in point, his body opted to sway a little, balance confused, causing Tony to look back up in alarm.

 

“You’re not going to pass out, are you?” His soulmate demanded, sounding just a hair frantic, and – Bruce laughed. A small, rapid burst that was raspy, a swallow of dry hay to choke on.

 

“No, don’t – don’t worry. I have community service anyway, passing out-.” He shook his head. “Not really conducive to that. Plus they make you stay in bed for days after, and I _really_ don’t want to do that.”

 

“Community service?” The other man’s head tilted. “They do that here? What’d you do, stick tacks in all the visitor chairs? _Ooh!_ Wait! Is it for something you did _before_ coming here? Are you serving out actual community service? Is it both? Did you do both?”

 

What the fuck was this man?

 

“What do you think I am, some criminal? Or a juvenile delinquent? Tacks, really?” Bruce snorted, a wave of amusement in his gut as Tony grinned widely. “I tore up the rec room the other day, actually. Trashed it, smashed in the new plasma tv they just got.” His amusement died in the same wave that extinguished his companion’s smile. The other day, when – “I was … a little angry. After, uh, you know.”

 

Hell if Tony didn’t look a few shades into self-hating at that. “I’m _sorry_ ,” he whispered after a moment, a touch earnest. “I promised that I’d be there-.”

 

“It’s okay,” Bruce cut off quickly, his own hands twitching in an echo of Tony’s earlier fidgeting. “I didn’t, uh, I didn’t really … look for you after.” And cringed. Fuck, Banner. “I mean, just-.” Tony still looked wounded. “It wasn’t _you_ I was mad at, alright? I was angry _about_ you, but not – not at you.”

 

(There were angry, abstract pictures emblazoned atop the plastic tables in the kids’ rec room in permanent marker – some done in harsh black, others in vulnerable, dying red. Bruce had watched the birth of every one, watched the kids use the markers like tools to their own deaths, as if they had been carving open their chests and throwing every ounce of physical pain, every drop of _fear,_ onto the table. They just wanted people to see how they were feeling, Steve had said. The kids weren’t angry at the table, even if the table was what they hurt. And they weren’t angry at the nurses, or at Bruce, even if the pictures had been against them. Angry at this life, this circumstance, this stupid fucking ticket they’d been given).

 

(Watching kids die, fucked Bruce up. It was natural, it just happened, but they … _they were so fucking good_ -)

 

Tony was still quiet, watching, and maybe he didn’t get it, maybe he did, Bruce didn’t know. Didn’t know this man whose name was permanently etched into his shoulder outside of what tabloids and whispers spilled on the title _Tony Stark._ But-

 

“I have to go the Children’s Ward,” he said finally, lowly, didn’t miss the flinch at the words. “I, that’s where my community service is, with the kids. I need to go down there. Now. I was leaving when you got here, actually.”

 

“I can wait here,” Tony offered immediately, and then froze. Bruce had to wonder if the other man felt the same chill that he had. “Fuck, I didn’t – shit. Bruce, I meant, _mean_ , ugh, screw it.” His face scrunched up, a wrinkle of an expression that was humorous in an unhumorous situation. “I want to talk, **_I really do want to fucking talk,_** but the… with the … kids-.”

 

Ah.

 

“It’s okay,” Bruce soothed, half-awkward. “That’s – not a lot of people can. I have to, though, and I … like to, so. You, uh, you can stay here, if you really want to…?” _If you really will?_ He didn’t say, because that wasn’t fair. _Will you actually do it this time?_ A more cynical thought pressed – fuck, Banner, stop – _Will you actually still be here when I’m done?_

“I do.” It was firm, and there was the infamous Stark _(Stark)_ resoluteness. “I wa- I’ll stay. Okay? Two or ten hours or however long from now until you get back, I’ll be here. Starving, probably, but I’ll be here.” This time.

 

“… Visiting hours are over at ten,” Bruce couldn’t help pointing out as he slowly made his way to the door, feeling Tony’s eyes on every step. “They throw people out after. Literally. I’ve watched it. That’s only seven hours from now, you know.”

 

“I own the building,” Tony quipped back, and hell, Bruce felt another smile coming on as he stepped out the door.

 

(Fuck, was this what Steve felt like? Was it really this hard not to do it?)

 

“Yeah, you do.”

 

Seriously, he hated Betty.

 

* * *

 

 

“Pepper, _he wears Crocs_ ,” Tony hissed into his phone.

 

As soon as he had been sure Bruce was gone, Tony had dialed Pepper’s number. He felt as dizzy as the other man had looked, as if the air had been sucked from the room the moment Bruce had disappeared – it hadn’t, of course. Logically, he knew that. Soulmate or not, one man did not simply take every molecule of oxygen with him when he left a room. It was the same feeling he used to get after press conferences when he was younger, only multiplied.

 

By an unidentifiable number.

 

“Oh really?” Pepper’s voice was light in his ear. “What color? Did he have any of those little charms in them? I used to love those things, ridiculous though they were-.”

 

“ _Pep_ ,” he didn’t whine, sighing heavily at the sound of her amused chuckle. “Pepper. You’re not listening. This man wears Crocs. Lime-fucking-green Crocs. The universe, in all of its apparently infinite wisdom – which I still call complete and utter bullshit on – has paired me with a soulmate who wears Crocs. Who _wears_ Crocs, Pepper?”

 

“Patients in an extended-stay hospital.”

 

And there it was.

 

His entire body deflated in the grip of the cheap visitor’s chair, molding into its awkward shape as the reality of the situation returned (as if it had really disappeared in the first place).

 

“You talk me into the worst ideas,” he grumbled softly, no heat behind it. “The **_worst_** , Potts. I should have just called your bluff.”

 

“I think we both know it wasn’t a bluff.” He snorted. “What’s he like?” She asked softly. “Tell me, Tony.”

 

_Thin. Bald. Bruised up, like he’s been someone’s permanent punching bag for his entire life. Fragile. Funny. He doesn’t have an IV pole, Pep. I thought those were mandatory, why doesn’t he have one? Dying. He’s dying._

“I don’t really know,” he admitted, rolling his eyes at her unimpressed scoff. “We didn’t really talk, he had to go to a … thing.” A thing. With kids. Hell. “He’s uh, he’s not … mad at me, though. Apparently. I mean he said that he wasn’t mad at me.” _That I left. That I left him there._

“Well, that’s something, right?” There was shuffling on the other end of the line. “That’s _good_ , Tony. You can build off of that.”

 

 _He didn’t even look at my name_ , Tony didn’t say, because it wasn’t fair. He didn’t want to taint Pepper’s perception of Bruce in any way, and after all, who was the one who had run? _He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want me._

“This room is really small,” he said instead; it wasn’t a lie. His eyes squinted as he took in how compact, how bare, everything was. “God, it looks like a storage closet with medical equipment. Why would they have built rooms this small? Pepper-.”

 

“I’ll look into it,” Pepper swiftly promised, knowing him – she didn’t press the subject change. “You’re staying there, then? Until he’s back from his ‘thing’?”

 

Was leaving again even an option?

 

“Yeah.” He sunk further into the chair. “Yeah, I’m … I’ll be back late, so-”

 

“That’s fine,” his friend assured quickly, quietly, her voice a balm against his nerves. He rubbed his wrist against the inside of his sleeve, comforted in the caress of her name on his skin. “You’re okay, Tony. I promise you, you’re okay. You can do this.”

 

“Yeah,” he repeated. Unbidden, an image of Bruce’s sunken eyes, wide and brown and a torrent of emotion, popped into his mind. “Yeah.”

 

“I have to go,” she said reluctantly, a muffled voice rumbling low from a distance on her side. Work called. “Talk to him, okay? This is hard for both of you, remember that.”

 

“Not. Exactly easy to forget.” He glared around the room again, and then sighed. “Give the idiots hell today. Love you.”

 

“Love you,” she echoed warmly, as she always did _(“It’s such a privilege, Tony.”)._ He waited for the click of her end, and then pulled the phone from his ear.

 

Bruce. Robert. Robert, Bruce. Robert Bruce, Robert Bruce. It could be hours until his … soulmate … was back again.

 

With precision movements and no hesitation, Tony slithered back into Stark Center’s system through his phone, typing **Robert Bruce** into the code in demand for results.

 

He wanted to know _now._

* * *

 

 

Hallways away, in the dark of their room, Steve carefully lifted himself from bed, face scrunched in answer to the overwhelming pain rolling through him in waves. Swallowing down the whimpers _begging_ to escape his chest, he unscrewed the IV from the tube in his arm, letting it drop silently to the floor. Sliding his feet against the tile so as not to wake Bucky (sleeping so deeply, _he needed the sleep_ ), he made his way to the bathroom, ignoring the hot tears sliding down his face.

 

It was just another day.

 


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

 

 

_Plain fingernails scratch delicately over the sensitive skin of his forearm, and the sensation calls a delightful shiver up from the depths of his body. His head falls back against the ground._

_The desert sun is grueling, unhindered because here, clouds don’t exist to soak in the unfiltered rays. But the two of them have sought shelter under the awning someone has jury-rigged to their tent, and against regulations, neither of them feel any need to pursue removing it. It’s different out here than it is on the base, where the desert is the law over the brass etiquette; no one is being hurt, no one is being disrespected. It’s a freely-given comfort where there isn’t many. So it stays._

_Sprawled out in the slightly-cool sand, he’s close to her in spite of the unrelenting heat, the fine lines of her body curled into his, almost one though they are still two. He indulges to hold her, one arm swooped beneath her back as she cradles the other in her own hands, attention rapt on the slowly teasing strokes of her fingers across it. One particular run of her nails is especially ticklish, and he can’t stop himself from jerking against her as his nerves light up in agonized humor; can’t completely stop the swell of laughter in his chest before it comes out as an amused snort. She hears it easily, as she hears everything, and her nails still as she cranes her neck to tilt her head, shooting him a wicked grin._

_It makes his laughter – his breath, his lungs – stop completely._

_It’s hot, and she’s grinning._

_It’s such a rare sight, any implication of her happiness, that the stretch of her lips is like a dip in the ocean in the middle of this dried up land, and he finds himself matching it._

_“Don’t,” he warns her, but it’s mostly just to see her lips twitch even more. “I mean it.”_

_“I won’t,” she promises swiftly._

_And immediately does it again. This time, he can’t hold in his laugh, and it echoes out like a bullet from a crack-shot._

_He hates the desert. He hates the sun. He hates the way his skin has burned, peeled, darkened under its ever-watchful presence, and he hates, just a little, the rifle that’s strapped to his back. The orders, when they come, come in never-ending waves with no care to the ones who have to carry them out. He hates having to be the one to tell his team that they’re moving again, that they have to keep their eyes open, that one minute of quiet peace can easily be interrupted by a child with a bomb strapped to their chest, half-desperate to be saved, half-desperate to do what they’ve been told to do. He hates that he has to tell each person on his team, every day, that there will, not might, but will come a time when they’ll have to make a hard decision that will make it impossible for them to sleep at night._

_But the desert has given him her. He hates it, the vast expanse of boiling sand, but if he’d never stepped on a grain, she’d have never stepped into his life. His one good thing._

_In retaliation, he rolls, wrapping both arms around her as he drags her with him, and she’s laughing softly in his ear, a low, husky thing that makes him feel light._

_“Do you mean to challenge me, James?” She mocks, delighted, eyes gleaming. “I’ll win.”_

_“I would never dream of challenging you, Natalia,” he responds immediately. She’s warm against him, welcoming – he’s never thought twice about himself, being with her._

_And then he dares to tickle along her ribs, fully aware of how close her elbow is to his neck – but she only squirms, playful, instead of attacking him. Sand kicks up around them like fine puffs of dust, he tastes it on his tongue, but the next second her hand is back around his arm, grip tight._

_She’s still smiling._

* * *

 

Bucky woke up to the chill of the hospital room, the dream falling away from him as the grains of sand had fallen from his clothes when he had stood up from them, months ago. Bucky woke up to the bitter existence of a sterile world, the smell of antiseptic and sorrow and nothing that could really count as life. Bucky woke up alone, out of Natalia’s existence, the clamping throb in his abdomen as constant as ever, each pulse a reminder of what was.

 

Bucky woke up to the quiet sound of a pitiful whimpers, dancing along the silent waves of the air conditioner to his ear.

 

Steve’s bed was empty, and the bathroom light, illuminated against the darkness the drawn blinds had cast the room into, beamed brightly under the closed door.

 

“Steve?” He was one arm less, again, but he pushed himself up, the blankets falling from his chest as he did. Steve’s IV stood by his bed like a marker, it’s tube hanging beside it, still and useless and unattached. “Steve?” He called again, louder, swinging his legs carefully around to let his feet graze the coolness of the floor.

 

The tiny cries immediately silenced.

 

“What’d you forget your pole for?” Bucky grouched softly, slowly standing, using his pole for assistance. His body immediately ached to go back to bed, pulsating the notion with each step he took toward the door. Damn it. “Steve, you good?” He rested his fist against the wood.

 

“I’m fine.” There was an obvious hesitation to the words, a strain in the notes of the other man’s voice. With cruel lessons, the desert had taught Bucky direction, observation. “Go – back to sle _ep_.” A hitch on the final stretch of his voice.

 

As if of its own accord, his remaining hand found the handle of the door. There was no lock to really keep anyone out. “Do you want to get a nurse?” He asked quietly, not without understanding. “There’s a call button in there if you need it-.”

 

_“Go away!”_

It was loud, more than a little frantic – _scared._ Bucky opened the door on reflex.

 

His heart sunk under the weight of the sight.

 

“No,” Steve groaned under his eyes, soft and mortified. “ _Nonononono_.”

 

He looked so small, straddling the toilet. Swamped in scrubs that looked wet from the sweat Bucky could see beading along his temples, undoubtedly along his back, he was drawn in on himself, as though compacting his body into something even smaller, more protective, could stop whatever was ailing him. A defensive maneuver, his subconscious pointed out – a smaller target was more difficult to hit, to hurt, and if the attack had been coming from the outside, he’d have been solid.

 

“Christ.”

 

Steve’s mantra of denial cut off as his body suddenly seized, the last _“no”_ stretching into a pained whine the lasted like a nail along a chalkboard; Bucky watched the muscles along his thin neck protrude, heard the air rush out of him with the cry like there was a hole stabbed into his body, saw his fingers dig so violently into his knees that they turned stark-white of the bones beneath the skin. He was pale, worse than normal – he could see the map of hopeless blue veins stretching up the length of his calves, reaching for what little meat was in his thighs to disappear under the pooling fabric of the shirt that gave Steve was little decency he could have at all in a situation like this.

 

“ _Leave_ ,” the blonde hissed through it, riding it. “ _Leave_ , Bucky.”

 

He should. They shared names, nothing more – no experience, no affection, they could hardly even be called friends. Bucky should leave, let Steve keep some of his dignity, let him have ten minutes and then call for a nurse. That was what hospitals were for.

 

Stepping completely into the bathroom, Bucky let the door close, and leaned over to grab the stool from the shower stall across from the toilet, swinging his pole around to the other side as he did.

 

“Bucky-,” Steve started again, but stopped as another wave of whatever pain he was feeling began to eat at him again. It was a bad idea, but Bucky dropped the stool in front of Steve, and sat on it, knees bumping Steve’s.

 

“Ain’t no room for pride anymore, Rogers,” he said bluntly. “Whether you’re throwing up or taking a shit, it doesn’t matter here. Shut up. Want me to call for the nurse?”

 

“ _No_.” It was practically a sob.

 

Cautiously, as much for himself as for Steve, Bucky reached out his hand, and settled it along the other’s quivering thigh, wincing at the pang of sympathy he felt at the whimper that followed.

 

“Then I’m staying. You didn’t take the suppository, did you?” The answer was unnecessary; you live your life relying on modern medicine long enough, you learn things you don’t need to know until you do. But Steve’s headshake was so vehement, so violent, that he was quick to silence it. “Okay,” he breathed. “Okay, I’m going to try something, alright? It works for me, hell, it might work for you. Just, can I try?” Steve’s blue eyes were watery when they finally lifted to his, red and exhausted and wet.

 

“Please,” he begged. Bucky’s abdomen constricted again, not all from his own pain. “ _Please_ leave.”

 

“Stop pushing,” he instructed instead. “It doesn’t help. Okay? Don’t push it, you just … you have to relax, Steve.” Slowly, watching his gifted soulmate for signs of any distress other than pain, he began to move his hand in slow, careful circles along the tense muscle of his leg. Steve shook with his shuddering breath.

 

_Leave_ , the eyes watching him said. Not a loud shout, not a war cry. There was no anger in the blue, no rage or disgust. Just an intense, soul-sucking sense of defeat. _Leave. I don’t want you here. Leave._

“I think ‘stay with them, for better or worse’ is written somewhere in the soulmate contract,” he joked over it.

 

“I don’t think ‘or worse’ means watching your soulmate on the toilet,” Steve snapped, looking down. Or tried to snap. It sounded hollow. Done.

 

Bucky leaned closer, swallowing the scent of toilet water, using his weight to dig the heel of his palm more firmly into Steve’s leg as his body began to lock up again. “Probably not, but here we are. C’mon.” The blonde was practically shaking under stiff muscles. “C’mon, Steve. You think I ain’t been in this position before myself? I get it. It’s embarrassing, but I’m not laughin’. And I’m not leavin’.”

 

Steve sighed again, long and hard and miserable.

 

And then his head fell onto Bucky’s shoulder, arms wrapping around his back desperately.

 

“Hurts,” he whimpered. Hot, wet tears splashed and burned at his exposed skin. “It hurts.”

 

Bucky’s eyes shot to the call button hanging by the string by the toilet, red and vibrant against its white base, easily within reach if he would just let Steve go for the few seconds it would take to reach it.

 

But he kept the rhythmic circles going, increasing their circumference to the top of his soulmate’s leg and back down, watching the marks they made on his skin. Steve’s breaths were wet, shallow pants against him.

 

“Relax,” he said again, the order both current and in memory. “Relax, Ste- there. There ya go. It’s okay, it’s _okay_.”

 

As if he’d been struck down, with a cry Steve went completely lax against, body shaking in waves as it finally triumphed to release itself.

 

The smack of it against the water came before the stench, but the smell was right on its heels – putrid, overwhelming, snapping out with every release of air and liquid. It wasn’t quiet, and it wasn’t quick. It should have been disgusting, should have made him gag, let go and retch –

 

But Steve was _sobbing_ into his neck as his entire small, aching frame jolted in the effort, caught between embarrassment and pain, his fingers _pulling_ at Bucky’s shirt as if trying to tear it in two, trapped in the need to destroy something in his own misery, and Bucky _understood._

“Shh,” he soothed over the noise. He didn’t have another hand to gentle him, could be nothing more than a shoulder for Steve to cry into; and he was crying. Hard, breath-skipping cries that were trying _so hard_ to be quiet. “Shh, Stevie. Don’t cry. It’s okay now, you’re okay now.” He continued to rub, softer now.

 

The sounds began to die down, the body against him trembling less, becoming heavier. The tears didn’t stop. The smell only grew. Bucky’s eyes again caught sight of the call button. It had never been pressed before, not since he had come into the room. He wondered if the nurse’s would even know what to do with themselves, if it went off.

 

“Don’t call them.” Steve’s voice was soft, raspy. His grip hadn’t lessened in need against his shirt. “Bucky, _p-please don’t_.”

 

He swallowed, head shaking as much as it could with the blonde’s blocking his neck. “I’m one arm shy of being able to help you out anymore, Stevie.” The old sense of self-hatred burned in his chest. He had carried Natalia. Steve, half her weight and height, he couldn’t even dream of helping stand, now. Let alone carry.

 

He couldn’t even clean him up.

 

“ _Please_ ,” Steve whispered, anguished.

 

It was rule number one of dying – there was no room for pride. No matter how much you wanted it.

 

Before he could lose his nerve, give in to the pleading whimpers, Bucky reached out to snatch the switch, pressing the button heavily.

 

“Sorry, Steve, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he murmured as the cry of the call sounded loudly from the hall outside of the room.

 

He didn’t know if Steve, who burrowed further into his neck with a new round of tears, heard him at all.

 

* * *

 

_‘Bruce, why does dying have to hurt?’_

As he slowly made his way back to his room, Skye’s quiet, aching question replayed in his head, over and over again.

 

_‘Bruce, why does dying have to hurt?’_

Skye was ten. Brain tumor. Her fucking _second_ brain tumor. She hadn’t even been out of the Center six months before she’d been back, body shaking with uncontrollable tremors. The first thing she’d done when he’d seen her was jump on him with a hug, despite her parents’ very vocal protests.

 

The second thing she’d done was ask him that question.

 

_‘Bruce, why does dying have to hurt?’_

“You’re letting yourself die.”

 

Startled, his head jerked up.

 

Tony Stark stood outside of his room, leaning against the doorframe as if he had no other place to be, sunglasses back in place, the brass numbers of _2012_ hanging symbolically above him. When Bruce didn’t formulate an instant response, the man cocked an eyebrow. “I said I’d stay.” It was almost defensive.

 

“You did,” Bruce acknowledged, shuffling awkwardly as a nurse breezed past. Carefully, he edged around Tony, slipping into the safety of his small room. He turned immediately, not really surprised that he wasn’t followed inside. “You got into my medical files.”

 

Tony’s hands clapped together. “Yep,” he nodded. “Let me summarize what I found. You’re refusing regular IV fluids-.”

 

“Because I’m capable of staying hydrated-.”

 

“And you’re not taking any oral medications-.”

 

“Because they don’t work-.”

 

“You don’t join in group therapy sessions or activities to alleviate stress-.”

 

“Because I’m _not stressed_ -.”

 

“And you’ve stopped with the chemo treatments.” Tony took a step forward, cutting off the instant response Bruce had been forming. “The only thing you’re letting anyone really do for you is put you in the radiation machine, and it’s not really working. You’ve turned down seven different experimental drugs because you are, and I quote, ‘sick of needles’.”

 

“Have you seen my arms?” Bruce asked easily, holding them out. It wasn’t necessary – the bruises were vast and vivid enough to be seen even if he crossed his arms over his chest. “My veins burst as easily as a water balloon dropped on cement. I bruise easily enough without the help – you should see my legs. That’s why I have a PICC, and even then, only used when I absolutely need it, for with the machine or a scan or something. Everything else, well, breaks me. Besides, the medicine isn’t really working on me.” He shrugged, dropping his arms back to his sides. “It’s okay. Everything dies.”

 

He couldn’t see Tony’s eyes under the glare of the light over his sunglasses.

 

“I didn’t come here _not_ to die,” he continued, voice soft. He felt a need to be gentle. “If someone manages to make it so that I don’t, then that’s good. It’s great – because then they’ve also found a way to save someone else with my condition.” _Like Steve._ “But I’m not waiting on it to happen. I’m not hoping for it. I came here because of a promise I made to someone, Tony. That’s all. Probably why they put me in the small room.” He grinned a little, waving a little. “It fits. Little room for a little guy.”

 

“I don’t think there’s really a lot that’s _little_ about you, big guy.” Tony still stood in the doorway, but his shoulders had drooped a little, becoming less apprehensive, and there was a smirk playing on his lips that Bruce matched as he snagged his pack of cigarettes from the roll-table beside his bed.

 

“Maybe not _everything_ ,” he teased back, plucking a stick from the pack and catching it between his teeth. He waggled his eyebrows for effect, and then Tony did laugh, a sound of surprised amusement, and finally stepped forward. Forward. Not away.

 

“Are we talking now? You’ve got monsters on your shoes,” his soulmate offered, head bowing to look at the creepy monsters the children had drawn. “We could talk about that.”

 

_I don’t want to talk about the dying thing,_ wasn’t said. _Not about the other things I found in your file._

_‘Bruce, why does dying have to hurt?’_

“Yeah,” Bruce agreed. “We can talk about that.”

 

Tony closed the door.

 

* * *

 

 

On his bed again, with his back to the wall, Bucky watched as Nurse Sharon and another nurse he had never bothered learning the name of helped Steve, freshly cleaned and unnervingly quiet, back into bed.

 

“Don’t take this out again,” the unknown nurse warned, screwing the IV tube back to into place. Bucky watched as Steve just blinked at them.

 

“He’ll be fine,” Nurse Sharon said to him after they’d tucked Steve back in. She was smiling, as always.

 

She hadn’t had Steve crying into her armless shoulder.

 

She hadn’t been the one too useless to carry their soulmate’s weight, to clean them, to help them back into bed. She hadn’t been the one who couldn’t be there when they were needed.

 

He glared at her. She rolled her eyes, exasperated, checked on Steve one final time, and left.

 

“I’m sorry, Stevie,” he said when they’d finally gone, trying again.

 

Silently, Steve, careful of his IV, rolled over to face the wall.

 


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

 

 

Steve’s hands burned red under the faucet’s pulsing stream of chemically treated water, and yet the chill from the night before remained so thick inside of his body that his bones shuddered and creaked with the freezing ache.

 

If he stared at himself in the mirror for longer than a few seconds, he looked like his mother had those last few months – sick, sad, disappearing from sight. Her spitting image.

 

He had never told her. Not about the dizziness or the attacks of nausea that had never seemed to end. Not about the doctor appointment he’d gone off to while Mrs. Ramirez from next door had sat with her (“Just off to the store, Ma”), not about the follow up tests (“late shift at work, I’m so sorry”), not about the bruises splattered across his body that hadn’t gone away as quickly as they should have or the bleed that had taken forever to stop whenever he’d nick himself with his razor (“Daydreaming again, Steven?”). Not about the after-breakfast call and the diagnosis and the long, slow walk home that had taken too long and been too numb to be covered up with any other excuse but (“It’s just … it’s hard sometimes, remembering that I’m losing you”).

 

He prayed, still, for her forgiveness in putting off SHIELD’s treatments to take care of her, for what little time he had had left with her. For letting her go off to God thinking that it had been the stress of work and his grief in her illness that had been making him so tired. He didn’t regret it – Lord help him, he couldn’t – but sometimes, when the nights got too quiet and even the sharp, steady beeping of the machines became nothing more than muffled white noise, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering if she had let herself fade away faster, stopped fighting so hard, thinking she was sparing him.

 

“…Steve?” Bucky’s voice was hesitant, thin, from the other side of the door. The other side of the room.

 

His reflection snapped back into the image of his own pale face. Her eyes had been darker than his. Happier, even fading.

 

“I’m _fine_.” He killed the faucet with a twist of the handle, shaking out his already cooling hands and grabbing the hand towel resting on the edge of the sink. In the crook of his elbow, his IV pulled.

 

“…I know that.” The response was given in the same tentative tone.

 

_I’m not mad at you,_ Steve silently snarled, grabbing for the pole. _Stop with the kicked puppy act already. I’m not mad._

 

He wasn’t.

 

Yesterday had been … embarrassing wasn’t the right word. _Mortifying._ His weight strewed across Bucky’s shoulders, fingers trying to shred Bucky’s shirt as his body fought against itself, against him. In SHIELD, the first go around before his spectacularly failed remission, he’d never lost himself like he had yesterday. Vomited, sure, but never-

 

Bucky walking in on that, not listening to Steve’s _begging_ for him to leave, staying with him even when whatever part of his body had finally won, had felt … destroying.

 

No matter how comforting the hand on his thigh had felt, no matter the reassuring words that had made the heat of his tears sting a little less on his face, Steve hadn’t wanted Bucky to see him like that.

 

Sighing again, he turned and opened the door.

 

Bucky’s eyes were immediately glued to him.

 

“I,” Steve said slowly, struggling to keep the scowl from his face. “Am not. Mad at you.”

 

“I know,” the other man answered quietly, fidgeting a little. A flash of a wince traveled across his face, gone before Steve could confirm it had been there at all. “I heard ya the first eighty-million times you said it. I’m still sorry.”

 

“Yeah, well don’t be.” He kicked at his pole a little as he moved back toward his bed, his gut twinging slightly with each jarring step. Not an hour ago, the doctor (after scolding him on not taking his medicine and threatening to have the nurses aid him if it happened again), had informed him that some pain was to be expected, and that it should wear off slowly throughout the day. She’d also pulled him from the new drug, though he’d only gone through two treatments with it, unhappy with something on his chart that he hadn’t asked after. He didn’t care.

 

“Sorry,” Bucky snapped back, and then immediately cringed in distaste. “No, wait. That was supposed to be sarcastic. _Sor-ry.”_

 

Steve’s fingers dug into the padding of the bed as hard as he could manage. “Oh my _God_ , Bucky-.”

 

“Should you be saying the Lord’s name like that? Ain’t you some saint-like Catholic schoolboy?” It was more of a taunt than a legitimate question; Steve’s fingers were starting to hurt. “Sure actin’ pretty bitchy for someone who ain’t mad, Stevie.”

 

“Barnes, I’m gonna crack you in your damn mouth if you don’t _shut up_ -.”

 

“That make ya feel better?” A creak of metal and plastic had Steve looking over his shoulder – Bucky was pushing himself away from his pillows, bracing his weight on his arm to swing his legs over the edge of his bed. Again, another wince flew across his face, but the sudden fury rushing across Steve’s back blinded his budding instinct to care. “Hittin’ me? Want me to sit still for ya? Lean into it? Make it easy?”

 

“You’re makin’ it pretty hard not to want to,” Steve growled. His arm twitched, more from the effort in contracting his muscles than from the desire to follow the thought, and a brief glance showed that his knuckles had gone white.

 

Bucky’s chin jutted out, defiant, daring, lips twisting up in an ugly not-smirk. “Hell, punk. I think ya _do_ want to.”

 

For the faintest fraction of a second, Steve’s mind indulged in playing out the scenario. Of taking the bundled, soulless emotions of yesterday – grabbing the echoes of them that he held now and reigniting them – and sending them into his fist, and sending his fist into Bucky’s eager face. The image came with the sound effect of _thud_ that wasn’t real; hits like that were almost silent, the only noise coming from the smack of flesh and the body that moved. His mind showed that too; Bucky falling back onto the bed, maybe hitting the wall – he wouldn’t have the best balance with only one arm _Christ._

 

_What the hell are you doing, Rogers?_

 

His fingers unclenched from the bed in an agonizing wave of fatigue, the immediate burn from the release just as hot as it had been from the water from the sink. “Stop,” he choked out. “I don’t-.”

 

Hit _Bucky?_

 

“Son of a bitch.” The other man blinked at his exclamation, his lips trembling back down into a tilted flat line. The loss of the taunting smirk crumbled the remaining towers of Steve’s ire like cold water to freshly heated metal. “Son of a _bitch_.”

 

They’d played rounds and rounds of their endless game of questions – Steve knew more facts about James Barnes than he knew about himself.

 

There wasn’t an ounce of real judgment on Bucky’s now uncertain face at all.

 

Just a look he was all-too familiar with from his own face, years before. _(“Stay down?” I just buried my mother. “You don’t hit that hard.” She’s nothing but a cold lifeless corpse in the ground, covered in dirt. “I could do this all day.”)_

 

Steve’s feet stumbled backward, stepping away from Bucky without consciously meaning to.

 

“I don’t.” The tingling exhaustion from his fingers traveled up to his shoulders, dousing him, but all Steve felt was … defeat. Almost an echo of yesterday. He shook his head enough to jar himself. “Damn it, Bucky,” he forced out, earnest. “I don’t want to _hit you_.”

 

“Then what do you want?” The demand was desperate, so soft it sounded more pitiful than imploring, and it knotted uncomfortably underneath Steve’s ribs. _How can I fix this?_ Bucky wasn’t asking, but Steve could hear it, clear as anything. _Tell me what to do to make it better. How can I show you I’m sorry?_

 

A knock at the door silenced them both before another word could find its way between them. Bucky flinched at the suddenness of it, and this time, _this time_ , the wince of pain was a noticeable attack across his pale features. The knot grew larger.

 

“What?” Bucky shouted out before Steve could call him on it. He didn’t look away, his eyebrows lifting in challenge even as his expression remained uncertain.

 

_Say something_ , Steve urged himself, but Bucky’s eyes were more grey than blue. Like a storm, swirling around him. He hadn’t noticed before.

 

“Am I interrupting something?” It was Doctor Wilson.

 

Bucky looked away, and the storm was gone.

 

Steve licked his lips, wetting the painful cracks in old habit. “No.” He turned toward the man lingering in the doorway, trying to school his features into something that could pass as believable. “It’s nothing.”

 

The doctor just cocked his head, a knowing smirk spreading across his face that seemed uncharacteristically hesitating. “Uh- _huh_.” He stepped into the room completely. “Right. Well, usually I’d be all for letting this “nothing” continue-.”

 

“ _Sam_.” Bucky bit out warningly, tight.

 

“-but I actually stopped by because I need to discuss something James. If he wants, you can stay while we talk?”

 

Steve’s stomach dropped at the words, and without meaning to, he blurted out, “Is something wrong?” before he could process that he probably shouldn’t.

 

( _“Mrs. Rogers, we have the results from your test. Would you prefer for your son to leave the room while we discuss them?”)_

 

“Nothing’s wrong.” His gaze moved back to his soulmate of their own accord, and found himself witness as Bucky sucked his own bottom lip between his teeth, worrying the edge of it in gentle movements – a nervous tick, another thing he hadn’t noticed. But his face was morphed into an annoyed scowl, deeper and more angry than the look that had been on his face when he’d taunted Steve to take a swing, and he was all but shooting fire at Wilson. “Steve’s got plans though, Doc. He was just on his way to go see Banner, weren’t ya, Stevie?”

 

_(“Steven, sweetheart, could you give us a moment?”)_

 

There was a pounding, low and encompassing and never completely gone, radiating from the center of Steve’s head. Bucky spared him a glance, fleeting, but long enough for him to see swirling bravado and the same unkilled doubt, and, because Steve was aware of it, the apprehension for another burst of pain lurking at the corners.

 

He didn’t want to hit Bucky. He wasn’t _mad_ at Bucky.

 

Steve’s mouth gained a bitter taste as he threw a sheepish smile at Doctor Wilson, grabbing his IV pole. “Yeah, sorry,” he offered, trying to make it genuine as he stepped around the other man. “I’m trying to get him to appreciate the gardens a bit more, thought maybe more sun on the flowers would help. I’m sure that Bucky’ll catch me up if there’s anything I need to know.” He paused, his gut pulling a bit again. He didn’t look back at either of them. “Right, Bucky?”

 

“Yeah, pal, I’ll tell ya.”

 

* * *

 

 

When he was younger, in the years between his father’s arrest, his own subsequent displacement, and Betty’s welcoming acceptance of him as a friend, Bruce had had dreams that were worse than nightmares.

 

They were ones in which he would wake up, and everything that had happened just … hadn’t. He’d wake up to the sight of sunlight streaming into his childhood bedroom, to the smell of pancakes wafting in from under his door, to the sound of his mother’s beautiful humming coming from down the hallway, interrupted only by her calling him to come out for breakfast. He’d felt every second that had gone by, felt every fiber of his carpet beneath his feet, experienced the stomach-churning excitement of racing from his room and toward her waiting arms and loving smile-

 

Every single time, he would wake up before he reached her – would _actually_ wake up, to a dark room and heavy shoulders and a feeling of emptiness in his chest.

 

They were called “false awakenings” – dreams so vivid that they convinced the dreamer that they were, in fact, reality – left their victims disoriented in their wake, with no other souvenir than a sense of loss. He hadn’t had any in a year and half.

 

But when Bruce woke up to the morning light and the sight of Tony sitting in the same visitor’s chair that he had been in yesterday, frowning down at the phone in his hand as he typed something out, for a moment, he was in one again.

 

“I thought you couldn’t come in today.” Bruce’s words rasped as his dry throat erupted in a protesting burn (pain. Pain meant that he was awake. For real awake). He coughed as Tony jerked, startled at his interruption of the silence, reaching for the capped cup of water faithfully at his side.

 

“Um,” the billionaire said dumbly, blinking as if it was _Bruce’s_ presence in the hospital room that was a surprise. There were the beginning signs of bags under his eyes, as if he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep but tried to chase off the fatigue with coffee, that were poorly hidden by shadow his hat casted across his face. “Hey.”

 

Bruce raised his eyebrows in response as he gulped three soothingly aching swallows from the plastic straw of his cup before pulling it away. “Hey. Meetings?” He prompted, his throat still sore but his voice fuller.

 

Tony blinked again, though this time his dark eyes grew clearer at the movement instead of more confused. He waved his hand – the one holding the phone – about dismissively, making a noise between his lips that would have probably been rude if it had been a word. “One of the bigger company guys is flying in, and things got pushed around in response, so … I thought I’d just come here. I mean, I can’t stay long-.” As if on cue, the phone in his hand audibly vibrated, and Bruce watched as he shot it a disgruntled look. “-But I just … I’ve only been here for like, an hour. Maybe.”

 

“Doing what, watching _me sleep?_ ” Bruce demanded, incredulous. He pushed himself up a bit, pressing on the button of the bed as he did to raise its top higher as well. He felt the ridiculous threat of a blush warming beneath his cheeks at the notion. “What are you, Edward Cullen?”

 

Tony, who had been looking uneasy at the revelation and Bruce’s initial reaction, barked out astonished laughter at the reference.

 

“Edward Cullen snuck into a teenage girl’s bedroom through her second-story window – _I_ walked through your open door. Which I closed, by the way, you’re welcome. Also, not my fault you were sleeping,” Tony quipped back, the chair creaking slightly as he leaned back into it. There was a smirk on his face, and the bill of his hat did nothing to hide the mischievous gleam seeping into his tired eyes. “Twilight fan, really? _Really_ really?”

 

Bruce rolled his eyes at the other man’s amusement, wincing as a slap of a headache protested the action. “Yes, _really_ really. Don’t hate, it was a fun read. At least until the last book with the whole … baby thing or whatever.” It had been something to do in the hours he’d spent secluded in the corner of the treatment room, trying to keep his mind off of the needles in his arm, of how much he hated himself, of how _angry_ he’d been at Betty for putting him there. He didn’t say it. “And obviously you’re a fan too, sitting there, watching me sleep. That had to have been boring for you. I’m sure there were other more important things you could have been doing.” _Like not wasting your time here with me_.

 

“Well, Edward _is_ my middle name,” he purred, and then laughed again “And of course there were other things to do. Stark Industries is _bigger_ than what people think it is, you know? We work on many different things that don’t even have SI’s name attached to them, and it’s my job to oversee every single one. Just so happens that right now, I’m overseeing Stark Center. _Very_ important to our image, especially after Af-.” His mouth clicked shut, humor draining quickly from his face. Bruce heard the word anyway.

 

(Sickly deathbed patient he may be, Bruce was still living in Stark Center. When the current Stark had been kidnapped by terrorists during a convoy attack, everyone in the hospital had heard of it – the younger kids downstairs had actually made “Come Back Soon!” pictures for him. When Tony had been rescued and returned four months ago, there’d been gossip, mellow “approved for the ill” parties – more pictures from the kids that had had brighter colors than the first. Bruce didn’t need to hack into a file on Tony Stark; the 24-hour news cycle was more than enough).

 

Another vibration from Tony’s phone cut them both off from any possible subject changes. “For fuck’s sake,” Tony grumbled, jerking it up to his face as his thumb zapped out a response to whatever was said. “I’m the _co_ -CEO, I shouldn’t have to answer _everything_. There are other people in the company who can answer the same damn questions and who are more accessible oh my _God_ -”

 

A timid, gentle knock against Bruce’s door sliced through Tony’s ramblings – they both jumped at the sound, turning toward it as the door creaked open.

 

“Bruce?” A hairless head poked through the gap. “Are you awa- oh.”

 

Steve stood in the doorway, awkward and pulling at the hem of his shirt. If the bags under Tony’s eyes had been noticeable, Steve’s were downright his most defining feature, their color making his already large blue eyes impossibly bigger. And, Bruce noted, his brow twitching, the misery in them that much more apparent.

 

“Steve?” He questioned, concern blossoming in his chest.

 

“I’m sorry,” his friend whispered, his face changing lightly with the blush that Bruce had denied for himself earlier. “I didn’t realize you had company. I can go-.”

 

“Steve?” Tony cracked out like thunder. The chair scraped along the floor, and when Bruce looked over, he saw that Tony was standing up, beaming with much the same smile he’d worn for Bruce at the beginning of yesterday. “Like, _Steve_ Steve? Platonic Steve? Bruce, is this your platonic Steve? Hi! No, don’t be ludicrous, get in here.”

 

Bruce watched as Steve crossed through the door, expression a mix of wary and confused as Tony all but bounded up to him, reaching for his hand. “Awesome, I was wondering if I was going to get to meet you. So this is what happens when someone’s soulmate meets their soulmate’s other soulmate, huh? You’re shorter than I expected, like – _short_. Very petite. Sort of tiny.”

 

For a second, something in Steve’s face shifted. _“Excuse me?”_

 

“Strong grip, though.” Tony blanched, and Bruce found himself smiling. “Wow, ow, okay, you’re defensive on your size, got it, Mighty Mouse. I won’t-.” The phone vibrated again, and Tony dropped Steve’s hand to check it.

 

His face went drastically pale.

 

“Tony?” Bruce asked, alarmed, and even Steve’s hand twitched forward, as if ready to catch him should he fall. “What’s wrong?”

 

The dark-haired man shook his head, dropping his phone into his pocket, and his smile became so fake that it almost looked plastic. “Hey, nothing. Apparently the meeting is back on track and now I’m late. Go figure. I gotta book it.” He reached out, tapping Steve swiftly on the forehead. “Once you’ve caught up, Mighty Mouse, or got some sleep, which you clearly need, keep your mouth shut. And _you_.” Tony then rounded quickly, facing Bruce, face falling for just a second. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said solemnly, and then winked, smiling again. “ _Bella._ ”

 

He was out the door without waiting for a retort.

 

“Okay.”

 

Bruce blinked, looking from the door and back to Steve, who still stood there, pole in hand. The look from before was gone, replaced with the same exhaustion that he had walked into the room with.

 

“Okay,” Steve repeated, and looked at him. “We’re going to talk about … all of that. We are. Because that was _Tony Stark_ , in _your room_ , and I want to talk with you about that because you probably need to talk, but … I told Doctor Wilson that I wanted to take you into the gardens, but I don’t. I don’t want to go out there, and I don’t want … I don’t...”

 

Bruce saw it, then. The growing tremble in Steve’s arms, the increasing lock of tenseness in his thin shoulders. The way his face was beginning to crumple, like a cracked porcelain doll losing tiny fragments of her face to each jostle of her base. Tony had just been here, joking about Twilight, and then he’d disappeared, looking shaken for reasons Bruce didn’t know, wasn’t really awake enough to work out. But Steve was still standing in front of him.

 

“Hey,” he murmured gently, reaching one hand as he used the other to scoot himself over on the bed. “Steve, come here. Come up here.”

 

Steve inched toward him, the tires on his pole squeaking lowly behind him. “You know those days where you just wake up and you’re just … trying to walk through mud?” He whispered, distraught. “And you’re surrounded by fog and you can’t even see which direction is the right way to go to get out? And you’re tired, and you’re angry at everything, but at the same time you’re not? And it sucks because you were fine yesterday and the ground was firm and the sun was out but _today_ …”

 

“Is a Bad Day.” Bruce grabbed Steve’s hand, carefully helping him up on to the bed, mindful of the tubing a needle trapped beneath Steve’s skin. His friend panted heavily against his side as they settled, though whether it was from the effort or the approaching break or both, would never really be determined. He flipped the blankets to cover them both. “No courtyard today, if that’s okay. I kind of just want to stay in bed. If it’s not too weird. Can we do that?”

 

Steve trembled against him, burrowing in – Bruce said nothing about the wetness he felt against his neck – but nodded.

 

“Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Your case worker is supposed to be by within ten business days to officially talk about it. So in more like two weeks, with how these guys work.”

 

Bucky said nothing, staring out the window as a nurse maneuvered her way around the doctor to access his IV.

 

“I just thought you might want a head’s up that it was a thing.”

 

The appearance of Dilaudid through the tube was a cool, numbing rush. Her hand touched his arm briefly, probably meant to be reassuring, before she disappeared again.

 

“James?” Sam pressed easily.

 

He was already beginning to float. He was safe to answer if he was floating.

 

“Thank you.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://ashnapalm.tumblr.com/)


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